 “We
have a fund to be employed as government shall direct for the intellectual
improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what is the
most useful way of employing it?
“All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken
among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary or scientific
information; or are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched
from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work
into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides that the intellectual
improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing
higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not
vernacular amongst them.
“What, then, shall that language be? One half of the Committee maintain that
it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and
Sanskrit. The whole question seems to me to be, which language is the best
worth knowing?
“I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have done what I
could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of
the most celebrated Arabic and Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here and
at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I
am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the
Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that
a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native
literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western
literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who
support the Oriental plan of education.
“It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in
which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met
with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanskrit
poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But, when we
pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and
general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes
absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all
the historical information which has been collected from all the books written
in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most
paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of
physical or moral philosophy the relative position of the two nations is
nearly the same…”
“To sum up what I have said: I think it is clear that we are free to employ
our funds as we choose; that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best
worth knowing; that English is better worth knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic;
that the natives are desirous to be taught English, and are not desirous to be
taught Sanskrit or Arabic; that neither as the languages of law, nor as the
languages of religion, have the Sanskrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our
encouragement; that it is possible to make natives of this country thoroughly
good English scholars, and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed.
In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am
opposed. I feel, with them, that it is impossible for us, with our limited
means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our
best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom
we govern; a class of persons. Indian in blood and colour, but English in
taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it
to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects
with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render
them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the
population.” |